Sean Penn has called on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to
acknowledge its “complicity” in the
Joseph McCarthy witch hunt of the 1950s — which prevented his father from working
in Hollywood.

For the latest issue of
The Hollywood Reporter, the actor wrote a tribute to his filmmaking dad,
Leo Penn, as part of an expose about the outing of suspected Tinseltown
communists. The Oscar winner recalls his father’s refusal to work with the “rising
neo-Nazi-inspired House Committee on Un- American Activities” and his shunning of former friends
and associates, such as
On the Waterfront director
Elia Kazan, for cooperating with McCarthy’s minions.

The witch hunt led to a blacklist, which turned once-respected movie writers and directors into
disgraced anti-Americans.

Recalling his father’s funeral in 1998, Penn writes: “I will never forget, . . . as the honor
guard passed the flag, folded into a meticulous triangle, over my lap to my mother, . . . stating, ‘
In the name of the president of the United States for distinguished service.’ ”

Penn continues: “Still today, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has yet to offer a
clear acknowledgment of its own complicity in the shameful witch hunt of the 1950s that was the
blacklist. In the name of patriotism and patriots, . . . and in the name of our own dignity, . . .
it’s time.”